Retaining walls are often necessary to protect different elevations of soil against erosion. The retaining wall structure can be built in various sizes, shapes and directions for different terrains and adverse conditions. In some instances, it may be desirable to construct a retaining wall structure that is designed to withstand large lateral forces. In still other instances, it may be desirable to build a curved retaining wall structure or a straight retaining wall structure having inside or outside corners. A lightweight, block module that could be used with other like block modules to build a retaining wall having these qualities would be highly desirable.
There are several types of block-like structures presently available for building wall structures.
McLean (U.S. Pat. No. 250,235) discloses the use of a prefabricated, interlocking, rectangular glass blocks having a full length groove and a full length tongue which are stacked one upon the other to build a glass retaining wall to hold back seawater.
Schmid (U.S. Pat. No. 2,313,363) describes a prefabricated retaining wall using blocks made from undisclosed material which has a tongue for positioning an upper block above a lower block and with the upper block slightly offset from the lower block.
Sampson (U.S. Pat. No. 1,415,197) discloses an L-shaped tile structure with a grooved upper edge and a tongue on a lower edge to fit upper and lower tiles. The tiles are placed in alternating positions forming cavities which may be filled with concrete.
Landis (U.S. Pat. No. 1,064,498) discloses L-shaped, artificial stone building blocks, with no hollow main body, which are abutted and joined with other like building blocks to build a wall structure.
None of these references disclose a lightweight, pre-cast, concrete block module which can be used with other like block modules to build a multi-directional, self-supporting retaining wall structure.